


That Time in Montreal

by BenjaminRabbit



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, limited drama, limited plot for now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2018-09-17 05:43:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9307916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BenjaminRabbit/pseuds/BenjaminRabbit
Summary: Coach: Jnr. Will be up your way 12th Feb.Coach: AFCA holding conference in Montreal, Canada, 7th-10th. See you on way back.Coach: Does you house have a barbecue? Thought that I would make my famous pork.Coach was planning to stay with Bitty for a few days before he continued heading back to Madison. He had been to a conference up in Montreal for work.Bitty thinks he may need some help to get through the coming days.A story that tries to explore the relationship between Bitty and Coach, avoids some canon and hopefully has a twist you might not see coming.





	1. A Day in the life...

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!  
> des-zimbits offered up a prompt awhile ago about Coach and Bad Bob Zimmerman knowing each other from when Coach played in the Canadian Football league. So I'm exploring that.  
> I know the prompt is asking for relationships, but at the moment I'm not going to write any. I may do it as I warm up to writing fanfiction, but as this is my first story please don't expect me to dive into the deep end!  
> Saying that, I'm going to add to the tags as I go along but the archive warnings for this story will not change.
> 
> Also, I'm Australian and do not really understand sport at all. So if you see anything that you think could be done better, please provide some constructive critisism and I'll try to fix it.

Bitty was surprised to hear that Coach had decided to attend a conference in Montreal. He had thought that his dad would never leave the state of Georgia for anything more than tickets to the Superbowl. But the proof was there in his hand, surrounded by white.

**Coach: Jnr. Will be up your way 12 th Feb. **

That was it. No further explanation. Bitty stared at his phone for what could have been an hour before another text from his dad arrived.

**Coach: AFCA holding conference in Montreal, Canada, 7 th-10th. See you on way back.**

“What?” Was all that he could process. The timer for the oven rang out, startling him. As he got the pie out, Holster walked into the kitchen.

“Sweet! Pie!” he said in a way which suggested that he hadn’t had a meal all day. Bitty looked out the window at the sun setting behind the LAX house.

“Holster, I know you ate like half an hour ago.” He replied. Holster grinned and got to plates out.

“I have to eat frequently,” he stated with a grin, “I’m a growing boy.”

“I don’t doubt that” Bitty muttered, looking back at his phone. He swore that Coach had at least doubled the amount of texts he had sent this year. Another text alert, it was him again.

**Coach: Does you house have a barbecue? Thought that I would make my famous pork.**

“Do we have a barbecue?” Bitty asked himself. Holster looked up from the pie that he was slicing.

“Maybe? I remember using one a couple of summers ago. Why would you want a barbecue?”. Bitty looked up from his phone to stare at Holster with wide eyes.

“Coach wants to come ‘down’ and cook. His going to a football conference in Montreal and is passing this way on the way back.” Holster nodded and started eating his pie. As he finished the slice he looked up again.

“Is that going to be trouble?” He asked as some of the SMH filtered in to get to the pie. Bitty shrugged.

“Well, he doesn’t believe in letting the bear get him when his cooking, I can say that at least.” Several of the boys around the table looked up from their pie. Nursey mouthed ‘What?’ to Dex. Dex, laughed.

“I guess everyone needs to be good at something, and maybe he lucked out on football.” Bitty smiled at that and sat down to eat the pie that Holster had saved him.

 

 

Bitty wished he could say that he was surprised when the day rolled around, but seeing as he had been nervously counting down the days, there wasn’t much he could chat about. He and Coach had been exchanging texts again.

_Bitty: Just so I know when to put this pie in the oven, what time are you expecting to get here?_

**Coach: Pete suggested that he could just carry me here instead of wasting my money on a rental. I think he wants to give me lunch…**

**Coach: Jnr, he said no later than 2.30 as he has a surprise training session planned for 3.30**

_Bitty: Are you getting a lift from Samwell’s coach, Robert Johnson?_

**Coach: Yes son. He goes by Pete.**

Bitty laughed to himself as he read the text. He knew from experience that football nicknames had ridiculous roots, just like hockey nicknames. Bitty set about making a blueberry and apple pie. For all that Coach enjoyed peaches as much as any true-blood Georgian, his favourite pie was Bitty’s blueberry and apple. Actually, thinking about it, Bitty should probably make more than one pie. So he also started to put together a rhubarb and raspberry pie, because he knew it would get a laugh out of his dad.

 

 

At two o’clock Bitty heard a knock on the Haus door. As it was usually unlocked and almost everyone on the SMH team had a key, Bitty assumed it was his father. Approaching the door allowed Bitty to hear a familiar tune being whistled and he opened the to confirm that it was his father.

“Hello Coach.” Bitty said as his father pulled him in for a brief hug. As he let go Coach asked,

“Well, are you going to let me in, Junior?” Bitty stepped aside.

“Come in. Most of the team are in class at the moment.” Bitty explained as he led the way through the Haus. “Can I interest you in a drink?” He asked as they walked into the kitchen. Coach shook his head.

“Have you got any pie instead, son?” He asked, “I have to see if you’ve improved yet.” Luckily Bitty had carefully timed the cooking process. This meant that the pies were in the oven warming.

“Apple-Blueberry or Raspberry and Rhubarb?” Coach closed his eyes as he decided.

“I’m going to go with the raspberry one, this time. And when your team come back, Junior, I will have a piece of the apple. Got to make sure they know you don’t poison your pies.”

 

 

Coach was in the lounge room watching ESPN when Jack came home. Jack paused to look at the back of the man sitting on the couch before heading to the kitchen, where Bitty was studying.

“Trying to prove to your dad that you do study, huh Bittle?” Bitty thought about sticking his tongue but decided that that was probably not the thing to do.

“He seems to be singing under his breath.” Jack continued.

“Oh That. Yeah. He does that when he’s doing strategy. It’s the Jaunty Alby Ettey song.” Bitty replied.

“The what?” Jack asked. Bitty shrugged.

“He only ever seems to sing the first verse. It goes Alby Etty, jaunty Alby Ette, Alby Etty, jetty plum ray, Jetty plum ray a tent, Jetty plum ray a tent Alby Etty, Alby Etty.” Bitty shrugged. “I’ve never understood it.”


	2. Ça a pas d’allure!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Coach pokes holes in a defense strategy, meets R&H, speaks in hurried French, meets Shitty and then speaks so fluently it almost makes Justin cry.

Coach had started settling in. There had been an intense argument about where he would sleep. Bitty was very smug to say that he had won, his father would be sleeping on his bed whilst he would sleep on the air mattress. The same air mattress they located in his cupboard where it was meant to be, but had to spend 6 minutes searching for the mechanical pump to pump it up. Coincidently, Bitty had recently found another two boxes that he had yet to unpack, underneath his bed and pushed right up against the wall.

 

 

Right now, at this exact moment, Bitty was sitting in a lecture theatre, in which he had proclaimed to have the most inefficient lecturer ever. “I swear on my pie, Coach, I’ve only learnt how to calculate the force of a speeding train. And I already knew how to do that!”

Coach Bittle on the other hand had just come back from a training session with the Samwell Locust’s. Whilst Pete had thought the Locust’s had a bulletproof defence he had been able to point out several weak points in the armour. Letting himself into the ‘Haus’ Coach headed toward’s Bitty’s room to put down his bag. As he passed the lounge room, he noticed two heads bent over something. On his way back down the stairs he ducked in to say hello.

“Hello boys.” He said, grinning inside his head when the men jumped. They spun round to stare at him.

“You must be Coach Bittle.” The blonde one says. He stays silent for a minute, a full minute where no one says anything. Personally Richard is impressed that they manage it. The other eventually elbows the blonde and introduces them.

“I’m Justin and this is Holster. Bitty’s told us all about you.” There is a hand to shake, and it has to be shaken.

“And pray, what has my one and only son told you?” Richard asks. Like some twins or close siblings, the men grin at the same time.

“He said that you are the Coach to the best team this side of Kentucky.” Holster states.

“Though I’m not sure he has a good grasp of geography.” Justin adds in.

“Son, he’s speaking Madison.” Coach says. “But keep going, I want to hear what else he has said.”

“Well,” drags out Holster, “He only recently said he picked so much Physics because you had inspired him. He’s always saying he’s good with the language of maths and that’s why he can’t do other languages.”

“What’s that? My son’s no good at speaking languages?”

“Yes sir,”’ Justin says, “His accent goes really thick and he just about butchers any language he attempts.”

“Interesting.” Says Coach, “What are you two actually doing?” Justin turns back to the coffee table.

“I’m going to apply for med school eventually and we thought it would be good to have a look at the math test I need to pass.” Coach walks around the couch.

“Well son, you’re in luck.” He sits down on the couch and the two other men follow. “Are you struggling with any concepts in particular?” he asks. Holster nods. “We’re having difficulty working out how to calculate the biometrics of a person.” Coach nods.

“That I can do.” He states.

 

 

Bitty gets back while Coach is on the phone. “ **Wee, Yes, Yes… I know… But it is in no way all my fault… It’s not like I’m the on who gave out directions in French to a foreigner and then refused to translate them into English… Yes… I did get on the Montmorency line.** ” Coach turns around as Bitty enters the room. “ **Hold on Bert, I’ve got to speak to my son**.” He lowers the phone. “So how was it?” Coach asks.

“Same as always. I’m just grateful that there’s no exam for this topic and all I have to hand in is a portfolio. Think I’m going to bake.” Coach nods and lets Bitty exit the room before returning to his phone.

“ **Of course I got off at Lucien-L’Allier and walked towards Guy-Concordia… No, you definitely said Guy-Concordia. You know, next time give me a specific address like a normal person would, so I can type it into Google Maps, and not just give me directions and numbers of blocks to walk…I will not say you’re right…look, Google may lie in Toronto but it is mostly helpful…Well, it’s also not my fault you didn’t look for the damned tower. It’s not like it's the tallest building in the city.** ”

 

 

Coach joined Justin and another boy in the lounge once he had hung up.

“Coach.” Justin said, spinning around from where he stood and pointing at the man sitting down. “Meet Shitty.” He finished.

“That’s a crappy name.” Coach replied, shaking the hand that Shitty offered. “Hope you didn’t pick it yourself.” Shitty shook his head.

“My 5th grade math class picked it for me, it’s stuck now.”

“Mmmm,” Coach replied, “I met the Human Eraser once.”

“Fuckin Luke Schenn?????” Shitty shouted. Coach winced as the sound seemed to bounce off his eardrums several times. Bitty looked through the kitchen.

“Yeah, I got his autograph for my birthday.” Bitty added, dusting flour off his hands and walking into the lounge.

“What!” demanded Shitty.

“I was in town when they had a home match and one of the players in the team I was coaching at the time introduced me. Anyway, he was Jnr’s favourite player for a while.” Coach shrugged. <<Ça a pas d’allure!>> Coach added making Justin nod.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure I have multiple spelling of defence, I've got my word set to Aussie/UK English but the web uses US English.
> 
> The French in this chapter I got off a website as the phrase. Therefore whilst I'm sure it's right I'm not 100% sold that it is/ or it's been used correctly.


	3. The one with the jokes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Have a short chapter to tide you for a little longer. 
> 
> Apparently it's hard to find the time to write if it's your first year out as a teacher. So, apologies for that one.

Bitty decides on the third night of having his father in the Haus that the worst way to wake up was to an empty room and shouts from downstairs. He’d looked at the clock, 7 am was slightly too early for a Thursday, especially when he didn’t have class until 1.

Walking downstairs, he found Coach in the kitchen, cooking crêpes. Standing almost next to him, in what appeared to be an attempt to keep quiet was Dex. The attempt at silence was voided by the fact that the two men were almost shouting at each other in some seemingly odd attempt to sing. “The drums they do beat, and the wars they alarm, the captain calls and I must obey. So farewell, farewell…”

“Did you mean to wake me up?” Bitty asked, grumpy about his forced early morning.“My son,” Coach started, “did you know that Billy here also played for the Alouettes?” Bitty looked at Dex and imagined how he would look on the football field. 

“In defence?” Bitty asked. Dex shrugged, the tips of his ears becoming a soft red.

“Protective instincts run deep in my family I guess.” 

“Well, you put that together as well as some cows in the meadow could have.” Coach stated, causing both Bitty and Dex to turn and look at him. “Anyway,” he continued, “the Crêpes are ready.”

After deciding he might as well sit down, now that he was up, Bitty joined the two men at the table. 

“I was recently in << Montréal >> son and let me tell you it is still one hell of a sight.” Coach started to say, before shrugging and then starting to eat his meal. Dex looked up and nodded.

“I went back two years ago and it was odd. Like nothing and everything had changed. <<Être en mosus>> I was annoyed that they had redone the Montréal museum of Fine Arts. Like, that place was tighter than bark on a tree.” Both Bitty and his dad stopped eating to look at Dex.  
“What?” they said in unison.

“That was like a threesome of language, dude.” Shitty said as he launched himself onto the chair beside Coach. “I didn’t know you spoke French, English AND Maine, there Dex.” He continued as he grabbed some food. 

Dex’s ears went slightly red. “No one needs to know what I can speak.” He snapped. Coach nodded.

“If you want to keep it on the down low, you get to keep it on the down low.” Coach said.

“Coach, stop trying to be cool.” Bitty groaned. Shitty smirked.

“You want to hear a good dad joke? Why do you never see elephants hiding in trees? Because they're so good at it.” Shitty laughed at himself and then stuffed a crêpe in his mouth. 

Coach snorted into his coffee and shook his head, grinning at Bitty. Bitty winced, preparing for what was coming next.  
“I finally bought a large thesaurus I've wanted for ages - but when I opened it all the pages were blank. I have no words to describe how angry I am.” Bitty pushed away his plate and let his head fall onto the table. If there was to be a dad joke contest then he would not be the one to choke on his cherry.

“Did you hear about the guy who invented Lifesavers? They say he made a mint.” Bitty said, raising his head. Shitty spat out some of his crêpe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Matador Network states that the idiom Être en mosus translates as I'm so angry.


	4. The BBQ's on me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bitty muses about university.
> 
> and I struggle to stay in the same tense (then give up, so sorry!), as well as attempt to write a BBQ scene but am .... well... you'll see.

The best way to interact with people having a dad joke competition is to not encourage them. This was something that Bitty knew from experience. He was also fond of not listening to his experience, and he’d already engaged with them. After he washed his plate, Bitty knew what he was going to do; he had to make a quick exit. He made eye contact with Coach and waited until he started drinking his coffee.  
“I’m only familiar with 25 letters in the English language. I don’t know why.” Bitty said as he left the kitchen. He heard his dad splutter and Shitty congratulating him on the coverage of his coffee spray. 

 

Bitty decided that he would use his extra hours on this Thursday to go get the extra ingredients that coach would need tonight. Coach had looked at the hockey teams training schedule and decided that he would do the cooking tonight. The barbeque had been cleaned yesterday and the ribs were already marinating. They just needed some more spices for Coach’s famous étoufée. Coach hadn’t planned on making anything too complex as he wanted to feel like he was on holiday. Regardless, Bitty was not going to see him until after hockey training now because Coach had agreed to be paid to analyse how the Samwell Locust’s could develop their defensive tactics.

 

If Bitty had to rank his university lectures from A to Z for whether he enjoyed them and the content sometimes hidden within them, then his Thursday 1 o’clock would be a solid F. He found the content interesting, and Ms Fillopthe occasionally used youtube videos as examples. He just didn’t enjoy the other people in the class. He also liked how ranking from A-Z would only work if he had 26 classes and he was in no way a masochist.  
Thinking about it, he thought that the only reason he would rank this class with an F was because he enjoyed saying Ms F gets an F in his head. He briefly thought about checking twitter during the rest of his break, but upon realising that he only had a few minutes remaining, he got out his lunch to eat. Late lunch on Thursdays not only prepared him for skating suicides in the cardio session afterwards, but meant that he didn’t have to talk to anyone in the class. He had previously wondered about how non-social he was in this class but had decided not to worry about it. 

 

Bitty’s favourite part of cardio Thursday, was the suicides they had to run. The first set of suicides were always the team skates, where they worked on moving as a team and stamina. If any of the team broke ahead or fell behind the rest of the team they had to start again. Bitty wasn’t one for liking extra work, and while he disliked bonus checking sessions, he loved the feeling of perfecting a move on the ice. Was it important if that was a great shot at goal, an axel that he had nailed, or moving with the team as one? No it wasn’t. as long as Bitty was on the ice and in control of his body, he felt like he was having the time of his life.

Regardless, team suicides were a bit of a pain. They were not his favourite type of suicide. After Murray and Hall had over seen the team suicides and worked them on other various Cardio exercises on the ice, they did Bitty’s favourite bit.

Speed suicides were a bit like conducting a beep test. Well, that’s how Coach Murray had explained it at the beginning of the year. You had to skate up and down a 20 metre stretch of ice. If you couldn’t make it back to the start line before the CD player emitted the next beep then you were out. Bitty’s favourite part of this was watching the rest of the team fall away as he remained still in the running. There were no prizes and it was not carried over like a competition. It was more that Coach Murray enjoyed watching them suffer and like to end his Cardio sessions with beep tests every time. He didn’t even record the results, just grinned like a maniac when the hockey players fell over on the turns. 

Bitty was certain that he even heard Coach Hall asking why they ended with something that was fairly risky on ankles. Murray had replied that you needed strong ankles to play hockey and Hall had replied that you needed working ankles to play hockey. In the end, it didn’t matter. They kept doing the speed suicides at the end of every Thursday.

 

 

A person could think, for all the complaining that happened on the walk back, that walking from Faber to the Haus was the most trickiest part of Thursdays. Bitty sometimes agreed. Even Holster and Ransom, usually bundles of energy where quiet. Well, until they reach the street that the Haus was on.  
“Can you smell that?” Holster asked.

“It smells amazing. Wonder where it is coming from.” Ransom replied. Shitty cocked his head to the side, “probably the same place that music is coming from.”

Music was spilling out of the Haus, and Bitty was guessing that if pressed, Coach would claim that it was a hockey player who had cranked the volume, not him.

“What is that?” Shitty asked as they got a bit closer.

“I can hear an accordion………….” Said Dex. As they came closer to the house, the singing became more audible..  
'Swing your partner, make the good times last. The music is hot, and with some good cold beer, You’re doing the Two-Step Mamou. C’est l’samedi au soir.'  
Soon after the song seemed to end, the playlist switched over. Keen ears could identify it as Chowder’s party playlist.

 

The smell of meat cooking in the barbeque drifted through the open door of the Haus and into the kitchen. Here it mingled with the scent of cooking pies, to create a welcoming smell for anyone who walked through the front door.  
Unfortunately, if you followed the sound of talking and laughter around the side of the Haus, as most people had, you waked straight into the smoke coming from the bbq. Someone, Nursey, had found some wood for the bbq at Coach's request. It was green.  
Bitty was one of the first people caught by the smoke. Once his eyes had stopped watering, he was able to notice Coach talking to Chowder while he stood, armed with tongs and a beer, supervising the cooking meat. “How do you like it in Massachusetts, son?” Coach asked.

“I haven’t seen a beach in months” Chowder groaned. “ But, it could be worse. I was offered a spot at Idaho State University.”

“Spread your net wide.” Coach nodded. Chowder shrugged and answered.

“I didn’t want to go all the way to Idaho for university.”

“Yeah, their football team is shit.” Coach added.

 

 

Nursey approached Bitty and slung an arm around him.  
“Where’s our lovely captain?” He asked Shitty, who was standing next to Bitty.

“Jack decided that the library would be more conducive to studying today.” Nursey nodded and turned to Bitty.

"Hey Bits, we put the pies in the oven like you told us too. Your dad said he would try not to notice any underage drinking, so that’s cool. And probs illegal but, shrug emoji." Dex swung around from wherever he was standing. 

“Did you just verbally add an emoji into your conversation? One you could have conveyed by literally doing the action implied!” 

 

Bitty moved towards the BBQ and where coach was standing. Coach turned some of the meat over. "I thought real hard about who's recipe I was going to follow. I settled on my grandme's recipe for chicken etoufee." Bitty nodded. 

"And chicken wings?" He asked, looking at the bbq. Coach nodded. 

“Chicken wings will win over anyone’s heart. You hear that son?” Coach hummed. “Is this all the team?” Bitty snorted.

“There’s like 6 people here, Coach. The rest of the team know their invited, they’ll trickle in like they do.” Coach nodded

“Just like trickle down economics.” Bitty shook his head.

“Nope, that one didn’t work. And our captain is studying in the library.”

“So I’m not meeting the boy that makes you grin like you sometimes do?” Bitty blushed and looked down.

“Coach,” he started and coach laughed. “The BBQ’s on fire.”

“Of course it is,” Coach said grinning, still looking at Bitty. Dex rushed over with a towel and put out the flames. Coach jumped. “Tabarnak! It literally was. I thought you were trying to redirect the conversation, though, not very subtly.”

“I can be subtle.” Bitty protested. Coach burst into laughter while Dex tried to cover up his giggles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I struggled to write this one, as you could tell from the chapter summary.
> 
> I also want to apologise for not even beta reading it myself. I will eventually come back and rewrite this story. I just also want to have it out for other to also read. I think/ hope that doing it this way will help keep me motivated to completing the damn story.
> 
> So thanks for sticking with me!


End file.
